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Deadly African Ebola Virus Linked to Bushmeat

“There’s a live animal caught in a poacher’s snare!” yelled Isaac Maina as he took off running through the bush to reach it. Maina leads the African Network for Animal Welfare’s monthly “desnaring” operations, removing snares in areas of Kenya where poaching is rampant. Guns are illegal for most people in Kenya, so poachers seeking animals for bushmeat make simple wire snares that catch and strangle the animals as they pass by. (Poachers after elephants and rhinos for ivory and horns are a different story – they use guns).

Maina stopped short of the “snared” animal when he got a little closer. It was a Coke’s hartebeest and it was running in circles as if it was sick. Maina concluded that it was blind, as it did not appear to see him, but it seemed that the animal had something else wrong with it too – something that made it run in circles as if it was crazy. Perhaps the problem was neurological. After a phone call to the Kenya Wildlife Service vet, Maina reluctantly left the hartebeest to run in circles – knowing that a poacher would think it was his or her lucky day if he came upon such a vulnerable (albeit sick) creature.

In the U.S., all store-bought meat comes from regulated, government-inspected slaughter facilities. There are rules about using “downer” animals – animals that cannot stand up and walk to their death for one reason or another – in the food supply. But when it comes to African bushmeat, all bets are off. Poachers’ wire snares catch animals indiscriminately, without regard to the species snared or the health of the individual animal caught.

Poaching increases during dry seasons, when little work can be done on the farm, food left from the previous harvest may be running low and animals are easiest to snare because they must travel long distances – via predictable migration routes – to reach water. A desperate enough person may not think twice before eating or selling an animal that could have died from a disease.

Two recent outbreaks of the deadly Ebola virus are now being linked to bushmeat. The virus, which kills up to 90 percent of its victims, first erupted in Uganda. By mid-August, the disease was under control – and 16 people were dead. Now, in an unrelated outbreak, at least 31 are dead from Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and the epidemic is not yet under control.

Ebola hemorrhagic fever was named after a river in the DRC, where it was first identified in 1976. Monkeys, gorillas and chimpanzees can also get the disease and pass it to humans. After coming in contact with blood or secretions from an infected person or animal, a victim will begin showing symptoms after an incubation period lasting from two days to three weeks. Symptoms like fever, headache, muscle aches, and a sore throat are followed by diarrhea, vomiting and stomach pain.

Because the early symptoms could be indicative of several other, more common and less deadly diseases, Ebola might not be identified right away – particularly in the early stages of an epidemic. Family, friends and health care workers might become infected while caring for a sick person, causing the disease to spread quickly and claim more lives.

The recent epidemic in Uganda began with a baby and then killed eight other members of the baby’s family as well as a healthcare worker who treated the baby. The healthcare worker also spread the disease to her own baby and her sister before succumbing to the disease. At present, there is no known cure for Ebola. Thankfully, there have been no known cases of Ebola in the United States thus far.

A 2004 report found that outbreaks of Ebola in humans were often preceded by outbreaks among local animal populations in species like gorillas, chimpanzees and duikers (a type of antelope). The scientists linked nearly all human outbreaks in Gabon and the DRC to handling of dead animals by villagers or hunters. They expressed hope that future outbreaks of Ebola in humans could be predicted and stopped in the early stages by tracking animal mortality and then sending health teams into villages when increased animal mortality is detected.

So why would people still eat bushmeat if the risks of doing so are so great? Back in Kenya, where there has never been a known case of Ebola, the African Network for Animal Welfare (ANAW) works to educate villagers about other diseases one can contract from sick wildlife, like anthrax. But they know that no amount of education or risk will stop a desperately hungry person from eating a sick animal.

After all, would you prefer a 100 percent chance of death from starvation or a less-than-certain chance of getting sick or dying from eating infected bushmeat? And with the large sum of cash one can get from selling a wild animal carcass, a family can get by for quite a while. Hunting wildlife is illegal in Kenya, but it’s easy to bring bushmeat into a big city like Nairobi and pass it off as beef or pork.

ANAW’s end goal is animal welfare, not public health, but in the case of bushmeat, the two can be one and the same. In addition to educating villagers about the disease risks of eating bushmeat, they also work to help the villagers make an income with activities other than poaching. For example, helping them turn the poacher’s snares they find in the bush into small wire sculptures, which they market to tourists. Until Africans can meet their economic and dietary needs without turning to bushmeat, the bushmeat trade will no doubt continue – and so will outbreaks of zoonotic diseases that can jump from animals to humans.

Jill Richardson is meddling in the lives of Kenyans now? This author is the same one who attempted to launch a deliberate hoax on the American mainstream media about a year and a half ago. That was pure unadulterated BS and this ebola scare article probably is too except this article is so poorly written as to be nearly incoherent. Must be a slow newsday at Food Safety News to have to fill space with rambling musings from a proven hoaxer. Gets right to the literal etymology of the term incredible i.e. not credible.http://www.lavidalocavore.org/diary/4540/science-gmos-and-the-huber-letter

James E.

Nothing like posting some Double Disinformation, eh “Lonnie P” (Mudd)? There’s nothing like a little character assassination to make a Troll’s day.
Richardson actually is an able reporter AND writer — and the link to the Huber material about the negative effects of Roundup is certainly no hoax.

Gail

I’ve long thought Ebola and Marburg were transferred from dead monkeys found on the forest floor to the humans who find them. I was unaware that antelopes may be the source as well. A woman from W. Africa was caught smuggling bushmeat into NYC as she missed eating it for celebrations and an African man living in NYC caught anthrax from animal skins he imported for his drum heads. It’s really only the close inspection by the Agriculture Depart. that has kept us safe.

v

The point is to become more informed about the world. Why is that so bemusing and suspicious? Nothing in the article strikes me as inaccurate or, indeed, unimportant.

Kisui

Well written, informative and timely article. Thank you Jill and keep up the good work. There is dire need to sensitize the public on the dangers of bushmeat to save lives and the work to reduce on bushmeat poaching by providing sustainable alternatives to Bushmeat meat dependent communities. We all need to arise and do something. The world is now a global village and what happens in Uganda and DRC Congo today affects US, Kenya and everywhere else.

Betty Betteranu

Yes! Arise, arise, rise up and petition USDA to stop putting bushmeat in our childens’ school lunches. This is a serious problem, a crisis really. Rise up, rise up at this egregious outrage I say. No time to think. Fear and outrage NOW.

Pete

Am I the only one on the planet who thinks that a fatal microbial infection is “just desserts” for anyone engaged in the bushmeat trade??

Maj Variola

The west will mine harbors and crater airfields. Anyone leaving will be shot or sunk on sight. Quarantine with extreme prejudice. Snipers sans frontieres.

Civilization is a choice. So is bushmeat (with fries and a shake?)

Choose now. Consider nuclear carpet bombing. Choose soon, or else.

Real estate and traffic gets much better after this plague. Much nicer than war or famine. Birth control would be better, but, ebola.

Heli

An interesting and relevant article, given the current global outbreak of Ebola. On Sept. 18, 2014 – two years later, and before finding this article, I blogged “Can you catch Ebola from Food or Drink?” on my food safety blog -www.thesafefoodhandbook.blogspot.com. But I wonder whether most contagion from bushmeat comes from handling the raw meat, or, from eating it.

H. Craig Bradley

BUSH GOSSIP

Wildebeests get infected in the brain by a Tsetse Fly, which causes the symptom observed and is referred to as “circling disease”. It is not necessarily a precursor to Ebola, at least nobody thought so in the mid-seventies. Its nothing new either, unless you are trying to make a false diagnosis or confuse cause with correlation without the necessary formal, scientific Wildlife Biology study to back it up. This article is rank (superstitious) gossip. Keep it in the hair salon, please.